EVENTS

What is the MEK and why should we care?

The Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) is an Iranian dissident group that has been designated by the State Department as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) since 1997. It is one of the main groups that seek to foment war against Iran and hopes to be installed as the Iranian government in the event of an invasion that overthrows the current government. It has put on its generous payroll a large number of Washington insiders from both parties (of course) who are lobbying on its behalf.

Glenn Greenwald provides the text of two op-eds by Jeremiah Goulka about the MEK and how it operates. Goulka worked as a lawyer in the Bush Justice Department and then as an analyst with the RAND Corporation, during which time he got to observe close up the workings of the group, which he labels a cult.

It is worth reading the op-eds about this group that has got friends in high places that are pushing for war with Iran.

If there is another illegal invasion, this time of Iran, the MEK might have some support. But many who have connections to the Shah’s fascist regime are still around, some fleeing to the US in 1979. Such people want to “get back their wealth” much like those who were thrown out of Cuba in 1959.

Remember Wyclef Jean using his celebrity and tenuous ties to Haiti in a feeble run for president? And how Ahmed Chalabi was somehow a “frontrunner” in Iraq’s farcical elections despite not setting foot in the country for 20 years? The same could happen with Iran if Christiane Amanpour gets funny ideas.

With all his faults, which were many and varied, the Shah was not nearly as bad as some of the other dictators in the Middle East, e.g. Saddam Hussein, Hafaz Assad and his son, the Taliban in Afghanistan (neither for that matter was Mubarak). His successors are worse. Don’t believe it, just ask the women of Iran whose progress under the Shah has been undermined by the mad mullahs who have hijacked the country.

Based on some reviews of Mr. Kapuscinski’s book, he is, apparently, an apologist for the current regime in Iran. The bottom line is, as I stated previously, the current regime in Iran is worse, and the current condition of women there proves it. Just as the regimes of Saddam Hussein and Assad pere and Assad fils are/were worse.

I would remind readers here that, in 1982, the late an unlamented dictator of Syria, Hafaz Assad, surrounded the City of Hama with several hundred artillery pieces and subject the city to several days of non-stop bombardment, killing upwards of 20,000. I would also remind readers of the use of poison gas by Saddam Hussein against the Kurds in Northern Iraq, which probably led to an even higher death toll.